New Year's Eve

So New Year's Eve found us on the road to Maryland. Not a bad place to be considering we were on our way to visit old friends, but a little dissatisfying considering we were going to have to watch the long awaited matchup between Virginia Tech and Tennessee in the Chik-fil-A Bowl in a hotel room. David was incensed that we were not attending the game considering it included both of our alma maters AND was only 4 hours from our house. I pointed out that they were having torrential rains in Atlanta, he pointed out that the Georgia Dome, is, in fact, a dome and thus impervious to the weather. I reminded him of the last time we followed Virginia Tech to a bowl game (1999 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans): we weren't even able to score TICKETS to get into the game and had to watch from an alternate location and still the Hokies managed to lose the National Championship to the Seminoles.

I should explain here that David was pulling for VT in the VT vs. UT matchup for several reasons: he only went to graduate school at UT while I spent 7 long years at Virginia Tech; we lived in the Blacksburg area for several years when we were first married and he became a VT/Frank Beamer fan; VT is usually the underdog in a matchup like this and who doesn't love an underdog?; Lane Kiffen -- need I say more? David was not a fan from the get-go; and of course, there's marital harmony.

Anyway, after I reminded him of the 1999 loss, he stopped talking about going to the game and even vetoed my idea to make a detour to Blacksburg and watch the game in a sports bar there. So we found ourselves in Summersville, WV in a Hampton Inn watching the big game.

Well, some of us watched. Others played Nintendo DS until their eyes bled. I predicted early on that if we let Nicholas play his DS without restriction, he would be easily able to stay up until midnight to ring in the new year. Nicholas is usually an early to bed, early to rise kind of guy, even in a hotel room with lights and television on. He will often voluntarily come to us and ask to go to bed because he's tired.

However, I have seen the power of DS.




Clearly, the great and powerful DS triumphed. Nicholas made it to midnight and watched the ball drop. He even put the DS down long enough to tell us happy new year! Megan made it too, but this isn't her first year to stay up :)









Ultimately, the Hokies prevailed, but the big news of the night for Nicholas was the snow! It was snowing when we got there and snowed overnight even more. He couldn't wait to get out into it, even if it was only in the parking lot of our hotel. Little did he know this was only the beginning of the snow for the weekend!